Blood Bitter Like Wine
by Athena Parthenos
Summary: A desperate Spike catches up to a distraught Buffy after the events of "Dirty Girls."


Title: "Blood Bitter Like Wine"  
  
Author: Athena Parthenos  
  
Feedback: Constructive criticism, suggestions, and praise will be gladly accepted.  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Category: Angst, slight Spike/Buffy angle, vignette  
  
Spoilers: "Dirty Girls"  
  
Summary: A desperate Spike catches up to a distraught Buffy after the events of "Dirty Girls."  
  
Disclaimer: Spike, Buffy, Xander, the Slayers-in-Training, and Caleb do not belong to me; they are used without permission, belonging to the great and powerful Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.  
  
Author's Note: This, I thought, was an episode that took the best qualities of Buffy -- humor, wit, angst, drama, romance and action -- and made them shine. Drew Goddard truly is Ultimate Drew. That last shot of Buffy as she walks away, horror-struck -- that was one that stuck with me, and it's a bit of that pain that's shown in this fic.  
  
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Her feet drag, scraping the asphalt. She stumbles along, holding her arms close to her sides, unshed tears blurring her vision. Her breath comes quickly, too quickly; she feels faint with exhaustion, but continues her slow, unseeing shuffle, not knowing what else to do.   
  
So many things she's seen, and tonight might have been the worst. Killing her beloved? Finding her mother dead? Sacrificing her own life, *twice*? Nearly being raped in her own home? They all come close, but tonight . . . tonight girls are dead, broken, and bleeding, a best friend is half-blinded, and it is all her fault. General Buffy, she was supposed to be; and instead she was Custer, leading her troops into danger too great for them. Caleb and his Bringers destroyed them, but it was she who led them there in the first place.  
  
She stops, taking a hitching breath. She is standing in the middle of a darkened, empty street. She has heard no footsteps, seen nothing from the corners of her eyes, but she can smell him -- the stench of wine soaks him. Weakly she turns around to face him; he still wears the clothes he wore during their disastrous battle, when he was hurled into the casks of wine, and the fumes roll off him in waves.   
  
"Buffy," he gasps. She realizes he must have been tracking her since she left the hospital; she notes that his face is a mask of grief. "Everybody's worried. Scared. Didn't know where you'd gone. . . . Come home," he pleads.  
  
She tries to speak, but finds that she can't, not without breaking down. She swallows and turns her face from him, her heart breaking yet again on this most terrible of nights.   
  
"Buffy, it's not your fault," Spike says, stepping forward, searching her face with his gaze. "You couldn't have -- " His voice breaks. "You couldn't have known."  
  
The tears begin to flow, at last. She looks back at him, her face twisting in anguish, as she explodes. "Couldn't have known?" she cries, stepping away from him, clapping one hand to her chest in a vain attempt to assuage the agony within. "News flash, Spike -- I'm the Slayer! I'm *supposed* to know these things, and I didn't! Everyone told me not to go, not to bring the girls, not to -- not to put them in *danger*. . . ." She is weeping in earnest now, burying her face in her hands, the pain roaring up to swallow her entire being. "But I didn't listen to them! And I took them, and now -- "   
  
He closes the distance between them, and grips her in a fierce, tight hug. She clings to him willingly, desperately. "It's not your fault," he manages, and she knows he's fighting pain, too. "You could never have known."  
  
"It doesn't matter!" she shouts up at him. "I was supposed to lead them, to protect them, and now? Now those girls are dead! And Xander -- oh, God, Spike, *Xander* --" She sobs into the wine-stinking shoulder, her tears soaking it as she shakes within his arms. He strokes her hair again and again with a blood-stickied hand, trying to shush her, but she cannot be calmed. She sees again those wretched, horrendous images -- Xander, gripped at the throat by the smiling cold-eyed Caleb; Caleb, as he lazily holds up a slender hand with long brown fingers; Spike, seeing and running, but too far away to stop him in time; Caleb, casually and brutally jabbing his thumb into Xander's eye, twisting, twisting, as Xander *screamed,* and the blood flowed like red wine. . . .   
  
"Xander!" she chokes again, trembling, her breath coming in quick gasps. She claws at Spike's chest, her fingers scrabbling on the sticky leather. Her hands move independently of her mind, which reels with the pain of her friends and her charges, pain she could have prevented if she had only been smarter, stronger, faster. . . . And she knows that all of it -- all of it -- is her fault.  
  
He hugs her to him so tightly that her arms are pinned, and she can only shake, drawing breath in great gulps as she sobs to him her guilt, her stupidity. She buries her face into his shoulder, feels him shift a little to close the last bit of space between them. He covers the top of her head with frantic, desperate kisses, whispering over and over again, "It'll be all right, it'll be all right, love, we'll be all right. . . ." His words are wild at first, and she hears the fear in his voice -- fear for her. She cries as he keeps up the steady stream of words, and it strikes her, vaguely, that if he repeats them often enough maybe they'll come true.   
  
She doesn't know how long they stand there like that, but presently she realizes that weariness has caught up to him, and now he is mumbling his litany into the mussed and sweaty hair that he continues to bathe in kisses. She quiets, too; she is so drained, so exhausted, that the sobs that shake her whole body simply cannot be sustained any longer. She raises her head tentatively, a cool breeze ruffling her hair, her shirt. "Spike?" she asks hoarsely. She feels the swelling around her eyes, the stickiness of tears on her face. She swallows the lump in her throat, and breathes, "Do you really think it will be all right?"  
  
He looks down at her with those pain-filled, tired eyes, and lifts a hand to tenderly tuck a strand of wispy hair behind her ear. "I don't know," he admits, his voice low. "But I know this, Buffy . . . I'll see you through it. No matter what." He leans down to press a kiss to her forehead, and she closes her eyes, and lets out a shuddering sigh.   
  
She feels a drop of water hit the top of her head, then another, and another. Soon the heavens open and the rain pours down, but they stay locked in their embrace. The water washes away the blood on their clothing, skin, hair; it overpowers the stench of the wine. Her tears mingle with the cool water running in rivulets down her face, and she looks up at the black sky, squinting against the rain.   
  
"We should get inside," he says quietly. "Get back to the others. Regroup."  
  
"I can't face them," she whispers, suddenly sick with terror. How can she ever apologize to them? How can she ever undo what had happened, make it right? Two girls are dead, more are injured, and Xander, her staunchest supporter, lies in a hospital bed with a gaping wound where an eye had been. How can she ever repair *that*? Fearfully, she asks, "What could I tell them?"  
  
He looks into her face, his own visage firm but understanding. There is water beading on his eyelashes, his lips; maybe they're tears, maybe not. "You'll tell them the truth." He touches her cheek, stroking it with the back of his hand. "And we'll keep on fighting."  
  
Tearfully she nods, biting her lip. She can't hide from her mistakes, and she can't shy from her responsibility. She blinks away tears and sighs, composing herself. She steps away from him, only noticing now how loud the rain is, splashing against the pavement, the buildings. He reaches out to her with a rain-slicked hand and she grips it tightly, giving him a rueful, pain-filled smile. He gives her one of his own -- bitter, resolved -- and they begin the long walk back, together.  
  
~FIN  
  
*sniff* ::lights a candle for Xander:: 


End file.
